English 220
Psychedelic Mirrors
Sex, Drugs, & Rock'n'Roll in Literature,
Art, Film, & the Web


 

Link to prompts for IMAGINATION CHALLENGE NUMERO UNO

Link to prompts for IMAGINATION CHALLENGE NUMERO DOS



Link to Snapchat Assignment!!!


DAY TO DAY CALENDAR




 

TUESDAY AUGUST 30

t's a fine Tuesday morning, and you stumble into our beautiful, utterly non-psychedelic auditorium (GMCS 333), having already read the first 63 pages or so of SURREALISM by Cathrin Klingsöhr-Leroy. As you read, bookmark the two works of art that MOST moved, provoked, aroused OR confused you.  Be prepared with notes to share your findings with your classmates.  Your four psychedelicTOOLGIZMOS™ for today are psyche, hermeneutics, overdetermination, and allusion--follow the links (that's why the words are blue!) if you wish, but we will go over these terms IN CLASS.



If you finish that task and find yourself talking to yourself saying, "I have no desire to check my snapchat, facebook, instagram, grindr, twitter, email, or tindr apps, damn it!! I DEMAND TO READ!" -- then go ahead and try and finish Klingsöhr-Leroy's study. Will you have to know how to spell Klingsöhr-Leroy's name for the final? I am not telling. Let me add here that I very much look forward to meeting you rowdy psychedelic mobsters on Tuesday--Tie-dyed shirts optional.

Your second assignment that must be completed BEFORE you enter the door on Tuesday, August 30, 2016? Download and print out this infopage--bring it to class today filled out completely.  The top 5 self portraits submitted (pasted pictures don't count) will earn 10 extra-credit points that can be applied to any quiz during the semester. So, say, you get an 84/100 or B, on Surprise Hateful Quiz 1, it will go down as a 94/100 on the record in December!


THURSDAY,  SEPTEMBER 1

Walk into the room today having finished your reading of Cathrin Klingsöhr-Leroy's study of SURREALISM.  The Surrealists, especially Luis Buñuel, Rene Magritte, Frida Kahlo (from Mexico, and yes I know she bristled at being lumped in with the Surrealists), Salvador Dali, and Remedios Varo all had one thing in common: they tried to capture on canvas the hidden mysteries of the psyche, the ciphered unknowable of what Sigmund Freud called the UNCONSCIOUS.

For today's class, your  psychedelicTOOLGIZMOS™ words are the unconscious, latent dream thought, manifest dream content, condensation, and displacement.




 

 
TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 6


We will continue our discussion of Surrealism from Week One--additionally we will begin to peruse the work we share with our shadow class over in the Music Department.  Up this week? Screen/Read Pop Sixties by Magnum Photos. Be sure to carefully read the book's introduction by Anthony DeCurtis. Your reading for this week is limited as we are fusing curricula--take advantage of this added time and read ahead for Thursday's class if you can make the time.

As you screen the collection, is there a particular photograph or photographer (or both) that reveals the inner workings of the human psyche? A specific image that begins to reveal the inner-workings of the Sixties or of an individual figure?

Psychedelic Mind Scribble/Automatic Writing Exercise Numero Uno:  Select and xerox one photograph from the POPsixties book and one works of art from the Klingsohr-Leroy book that you believe to have a connection to each other. Tape these two images together as in the example below and bring them to class.
 

THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 8


Arts Alive
Joint meeting #1
The Acid Tests of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters
CLASS WILL MEET IN THE DON POWELL THEATRE...If you are sitting in GMCS right now and the room is empty that's because you should be across campus in the Don Powell Theater located here. Today is the first joint class with Professor Smigel's Psychedelic Rock of the Sixties class. 

Your readings and listenings which should be printed out, carefully read, and brought to class include:




Day to Day #psychedelicmirrors Calendar!


It occurred to me that having days, side by side might prove confusing or annoying or both, so from here on out, your calendar will be a tad easier to read. Yes, there still will be scrolling to do, but I know you are up to the challenge!

TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 13, 2016

We wake up bright and early Tuesday morning rested and content.  In our hands? Our bright red and newly read copy of Richard Appignanesi and Oscar Zarate's new book HYSTERIA part of the Graphic Freud series. That's right! You've read the complete book, the whole enchilada, BEFORE walking into our den of psychedelic dreams. NOTE: if you have just joined/added our class it is ESSENTIAL that you have the assignment FINISHED before, yes BEFORE, you walk into the room for class at 11am. 

GRAPHIC FREUD: HYSTERIA  is a collaborative effort! As important as it is to read Richard Appignanesi's compelling overview of  Viennese shrink Sigmund Freud's groundbreaking ruminations on the nature of Hysteria, it is just as crucial to do close readings/examinations of Zarate's haunting illustrations.  Note that the cover, while bracing, actually does Freud a disservice as his greatest breakthrough with regard to hysteria was that both women and men could suffer from this condition--old ideas die hard!   Though you are only required to read it for Thursday, it may prove diverting to read Charlotte Perkins Gilman's THE YELLOW WALLPAPER halfway through your reading of HYSTERIA, so that the pages/ideas of both books can flow together in your crazy little head!

For the truly enlightened and interested--gloss Richard T. Gray's lecture notes on Freud and Hysteria, here, then sample Sander Gilman on images of hysteria here. Still not satiated? Get a taste of Sigmund Freud's writing here.



THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 15

Finally! Finally--the silent literati in the room rejoice as we now, for the first time plunge into some proper, real, bona fide, LITERATURE--the short story masterpiece, "The Yellow Wall-Paper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.  The story is short! Super-short.  So the first time you read the story, just sit down and read it straight through without any stops. 

Next?

Put the book away for a day. 

The next day (and, of course all this is happening BEFORE class, today, Thursday, September 15, 2016), I want you to carefully read and survey the images by & featuring Francesca Woodman that appear here in a New York Review of Books piece by Elizabeth Gumport. Rachel Cooke's piece in the Guardian is also moving, so give it a read if you can. Ariana Reines's piece is awesome--but I know, too much for you, right?

Also, take the time to carefully surveil the photographs by Woodman archived on this page--is there any particular one or two that evoke the feelings you experienced reading Gilman's short story!?  If so, print one out that particularly touched you and bring it to class to share during our final segment of the class: "YOU'RE THE PROFESSOR."

Last thing to do? Read a little about Gilman--she was something else and way ahead of her time.




TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 20

This fine Tuesday is pretty amazing. You walk into our den of psychedelic inquiry having read up to the April 17nth chapter of Junichiro Tanizaki's THE KEY.  Unless you want to finish it as most of you likely will do. At first glance, the genre into which we place this striking piece of storytelling alludes us: is it a diary? two diaries? a memoir? twin memoirs? a piece of epistolary fiction? Probing closer, we realize it is a novel--our first bona fide novel this semester.

And it is a good one! Dare I say, a great one. Tanizaki's ability to make the hidden mind, imagination, of two characters trapped in a relationship from hell will leave you demanding more and more (while it is NOT a requirement for this course, you are welcome to read DIARY OF A MAD OLD MAN, also included with the edition of the book I had ordered for you at the bookstore, the Vintage International edition.




THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 22

Junichiro Tanizaki's THE KEY is now in your rear-view window as you enter the airy confines of GMCS 333. In preparation for today's class, you have very little reading--the novel ends on page 157 of the edition we ordered for your psychedelic seminar. Instead, use the extra time you have when you finish the book to go back and reread the first 20 or so pages of the novel after you learn how it ends. Look for the little clues, tips, games, ciphers and more that Junichiro Tanizaki uses to build his wicked little machine of a novel. Certainly one of the things he wants to do is explore the depth and complexity of human desire--that is on the surface. Additionally, examining the dimensions of human duplicity are also at the fore.  But what if there is a bigger trick--a bigger game? Could it be that the deluded older man in THE KEY, the object of Ikuko's subterfuge, is not the only victim? That you, indeed, the reader, may be the other victim played the fool?  Bring to class a paper onto which you have typed out a brief passage from the first 50 pages or so of the novel that you have determined to be essential, dynamic, meaningful, or provocative! This should also be a selection that speaks to, or is in interaction with, a brief passage (two or three sentences is fine) from the last 50 pages of the novel. That's it--but be prepared to justify your selection of these two passages in a paragraph-length argument when called upon to do so in class.

NOTE: Today you will receive your first paper assignment-- Analytical Imagination Challenge Numero Uno!!!!  It will be due Tuesday, October 11, 2016, at the beginning of class . Be sure to put it in the correct bag for your team--they will be clearly marked. Note there will be five bags as you have the choice to be graded by your wonderfully gifted and kind TA or your unpredictable, demanding, picky Professor

KATLIN SWEENEY
Trippy Dreamers
Ackerman to Fergus

CASEY HANDS
Groovy Hallucinators
Fitch to Macedo

LAUREN LUEDKE
Psychedelic Surfers
Mackenzie to Roscelli

JENN CARTER
Phantasy Foragers
Roueenfar to Zralka

BILL
NERICCIO
Cruel
Demanding
Academic
Type


Link to your first Imagination Challege (aka, your 1st essay)

TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 27
CLASS in GMCS 333


What a weekend--you walk into our psychedelic teatro, GMCS 333, having read up to page 180 in Kurt Vonnegut's BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS. You pat yourself on the back for your achievement (the largest dosage of reading we will have this semester, probably).  In these first 16 chapters you are introduced to one of the more gifted American novelists of the 20th century--and certainly one of the more singular voices in the history of literature.  Know that Vonnegut's background was NOT literary--he was a below average biochemistry undergraduate at Cornell University (go Big Red!) and later, a University of Chicago cultural anthropology dropout. After surviving the Dresden firebombing in WWII, he returned to the U.S. and worked as a spokesman for General Electric. The time he spent in the bowels of CORPORATE AMERICA did a number on his head (his psyche too) and he spent the rest of his long, prolific life sorting things out.

ALSO! For the second time this semester, we are synchronizing our psyches with the 200 students in Professor Eric Smigel's class--so do take the time to peruse the links to that material!

Psychedelic Surf Rock in Los Angeles


Listening: The Electric Prunes, “I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night)” (1966) + The Beach Boys, “Good Vibrations” (1966)

Reading: Jules Siegel, “Goodbye Surfing Hello God!—The Religious Conversion of Brian Wilson” (1967) + Notes on "I Had too Much to Dream (Last Night) & "Good Vibrations



 
THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 29
CLASS IN THE DON POWELL THEATER

NOTE! CLASS WILL MEET IN THE DON POWELL THEATRE

THE PSYCHEDELIC SCENE IN LA & KURT VONNEGUT'S BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS are both on the plate for our second joint class with the groovy music-heads in Eric Smigel's MUSIC 351 class. For today you have finished reading BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS and are ready to get into a discussion of what ties together Vonnegut's scathing critique of mainstream American corporate culture and the visionary rantings/music of the ultimate American rock and roll band, the Doors (Lead singer and 60s "bae" Jim Morrison, pictured above).  When you finish your reading do your work that we share with our music-head friends:

When You’re Strange: The Doors

Listening: The Doors, “Break On Through” (1967); + The Doors, “People Are Strange” (1967)

Reading: Jerry Hopkins, “The Rolling Stone Interview: Jim Morrison” (1969) + Notes on "People are Strange" and "Break on Through

TUESDAY OCTOBER 4

Music and the Psyche--Nick Hornby's HIGH FIDELITY

Read to page 134 in Nick Hornby's outstanding novel. Where in "The Yellow Wallpaper" we walked around inside the head of a woman battling all kinds of neuroses, we now get to spend three days inside the head of Rob, an equally mixed up person, only this time, a man.  The psyches of men and women and others are our domain this term. Consider how Hornby deepens your understanding of human psychology and the male psyche.


THURSDAY OCTOBER 6

Try as hard as you can to finish reading Nick Hornby's HIGH FIDELITY!!!!!!

Hornby probes various aspects of the male psyche whilst linking it--in his main protagonist Rob Fleming--to the trajectory of the rock music industry and music in general.  

As you read, consider the relationship between psychology and music.  In our YOU'RE THE PROFESSOR segment for today, be prepared to cue up and play part of a song that triggers episodes of nostalgia for you and to share it with the class.

The first 7 people to email me at memo@sdsu.edu with the link to song on YouTube will have the chance to play a bit of music and share past histories in front of the class today.




TUESDAY OCTOBER 11

No reading! Why?  You know why:



Analytical Imagination Challenge Numero Uno Due Today at the Beginning of Class!


In class we will screen:MAD MEN!

Directed by Scott Hornbacher with a screenplay by Semi Chellas and series creator Matthew Weiner, the "Far Away Places," Season 5, Episode 6 (2012) chapter of AMC's Mad Men is memorable for multiple reasons: structure, writing, acting, and cinematography.  It is also one of the more 'literary' episodes blending three parallel narratives with a secret hanging over it throughout: a lurking knowledge that somehow these three narratives are thematically fused. After we watch the episode in class today, make a visit to this site and marvel at all the details that go into creating a period piece for contemporary television.





THURSDAY OCTOBER 13

For class today, read the Introduction to Tex[t]-Mex entitled "Backstory," pages 15 to 30, and the first 15 pages or so of the chapter on Orson Welles's TOUCH OF EVIL.  In class we will begin to screen Welles's drug-filled tale of fun and treachery along the U.S. / Mexico border.  Welles's border epic/film noir classic asks that we reconsider the contours of the cultural space we live in--this will be hard work.  As we have learned in the last year (and especially from the presidential race!!!), hallucinations of the "Mexican" in American (and California) fuel nightmare scenarios for "Mexicans" and "Americans" alike. Welles seeks to make this nightmare more complicated (as do I with my own gnarly prose takes on the same). Read slowly and carefully, and don't be shy about having a dictionary (or dictionary app) nearby as you plod through the swamps of my imagination.





TUESDAY OCTOBER 18


Our screening of Touch of Evil  continues in class today--enter the room having finished the chapter on Welles's film TOUCH OF EVIL and having read both the chapters on Rita Hayworth and Speedy Gonzalez. Welles's tale of Sex, Drugs, and Rockn'Roll set along the US/Mexico Border opens our eyes to what may be thought of as a "psychology of the border." Are there particular phenomena associated with being Mexican in America? With being bilingual. With being part of a population that needs to be "walled in."?

THURSDAY OCTOBER 20

Read the two "Seductive Hallucination Galleries" sections of TEXTMEX pages 31-38 & 173-190; also, begin to read Carlos Fuentes's THE CRYSTAL FRONTIER, perhaps just the first chapter, though we may not have time to deal with all of the readings during our seminar. To top things off we will begin class by concluding our screening of Welles's nightmare classic TOUCH OF EVIL and continue our discussion of the psychedelic/psychotropic warping of consciousness that takes place along the U.S. / Mexico border.





TUESDAY OCTOBER 25


It is a special day today as the film production team and crew of Mextasy enter our palace of psychotropic pedagogical fun to film a segment of their TV show now in development--should you dress up? That's up to you, but it's always good to be ready for your closeup, no?  Sorry, filming cancelled.

For class, do your best to read all of Carlos Fuentes's THE CRYSTAL FRONTIER--if you have to concentrate on specific chapters, you might want to focus on Pain, The Line of Oblivion, Malinztin of the Maquilas, The Crystal Frontier, and Rio Grande Rio Bravo. Fuentes's evocative novel attempts to refigure the very lands under our feet, revision the contours of a contentious, rich land where the legacies and destinies of Europe and the Americas find their crossroads. This class, too, is special for me as Fuentes was my mentor at Cornell at a crisis moment of my academic career. In a little way, this lecture is an attempt to say gracias to a writer, a teacher, and a friend, who changed my life forever.

THURSDAY OCTOBER 27


Today, in class, we will begin screening Michelangelo Antonioni's perplexing BLOW-UP. With TOUCH OF EVIL, we were trapped in the psychologically chaotic world between two borders, but we are no safer in Antonioni's London.  Here, too, we feel submerged into a world of paranoia and surveillance.  Meaning itself starts to dissolve into undecidability.





Here's a period trailer for the movie:




TUESDAY NOVEMBER 1


Can you believe it? It is the 9nth week of the semester already--and we are on the home stretch with the bulk of our reading for the semester completed (for most of you ;-0 in any case).  So several things loom on the horizon--your 2nd major imagination challenge, see below; your final exam, click for sample finals from the past that I have given here; and one more cool novel, see November 8, 2016 below.

This will be a good part of the semester to catch up on any reading you may have missed (or skipped) as it is bound to catch up with you on the final if you have done so.  This moment of the semester also presents you with added time to review--ample time to be sure you know the names of authors, major characters from the books and cinema we have surveyed, and the meanings of the various and sundry psychedelic TOOLGIZMOS™
(Literary/Cinematic toolkit words like La Quiebra, Allusion, Epigraph, etc) we have introduced throughout the semester.

What will we do today in GMCS 333? We will complete our screening of Antonioni's BLOW-UP.  In class we continue our discussion of the film's meditation on film, photography, surveillance, posing, and cinema. Plus, of course, as this is a fusion week with Professor Smigel's class, we have joint readings: it's  Psychedelic Supergroups/British Bad Boys week! Between Thomas, the photographer in Blow-Up with his phallus-proxing camera and Mick "Is that your microphone or are you just glad to see me microphone" Jagger, we may not get out of this week on one piece!


Listening: The Yardbirds, “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago” (1966) Cream, “Sunshine of Your Love” (1967) Traffic, “Paper Sun” (1967)

Reading: Jann Wenner, “The Rolling Stone Interview: Eric Clapton” (1968)



Imagination Challenge Numero 2 is now LIVE TODAY, Tuesday November 1, 2016 !!!! Click here or hit the guy blown away below with your cursor.


THURSDAY NOVEMBER 3

It's BRITISH BAD BOYS day for Professor Nericcio and Smigel's classes--that's right! a joint meeting of the two psychedelic mobs in the Don Powell Theatre. CLASS WILL MEET IN THE DON POWELL THEATRE

PREPARATION:
Listening: Rolling Stones, “She’s a Rainbow” (1967) The Who, “I Can See for Miles” (1967)

Reading: Jann Wenner, “Rolling Stone Interview: Pete Townshend” (1968)




TUESDAY NOVEMBER 8


Read to at least page 122 in Haruki Murakami's SPUTNIK SWEETHEART. By this time of the semester you have been exposed to a diverse collection of texts--many innovative and iconoclastic: works that bend and reshape the conventions of storytelling.  Come to class ready to discuss what Murakami adds to the mix--how his experiments in storytelling push the evolution of the Novel.





THURSDAY NOVEMBER 10

Complete your reading of Murakami's novel--come to class with a sheet of paper. What's on this sheet of paper? 1. Fold it in half towards yourself and write your name as big as you can on the outside along with your group name (drawings also welcome). 2. On the inside, print your name again and list the name of your group as well. 3. Write out (print if your writing is not legible) what you view to be the two or three key/pivotal/amazing lines you run across in Murakami's novel.  Come to class with this sheet of paper.

Check out the adaptation, opposite--an evocative rendition!






























NOTE: REMEMBER your snapchat posting is due by 10am, Friday November 11, 2016

TUESDAY NOVEMBER 15

You are in writing mode what with Imagination Challenge Numero Dos on the horizon for Thursday, so this week: NO READING!*

*Except for all of the wonderful reading you are doing whilst researching your masterwork essay for us. And except for all the reading and re-reading you will do of your essay before you turn it in because if you turn it in without proofreading and without a concern for spelling, grammar, and the basic rules of the English languague, we may not read past the first page!

In class, we will begin our screening and discussion of Sofia Coppola's SOMEWHERE, her masterwork filmed treatment focused on the life (and the consequences of that life) in Hollywood.  If there is any medium that can warp the human psyche's balance, destroy the equilibrium of human consciousness, it is Hollywood--and Coppola's funny/sad motion picture, focused on the day to day life of Johnny Marco (played by Stephen Dorff, self-exiled in the curious corridors of LA's Chateau Marmont), is one of the best self-examinations of Hollywood (by a Hollywood native, Sophia Coppola, the daughter of Academy Award-winning director, Francis Ford Coppola) since Billy Wilder's SUNSET BOULEVARD.


THURSDAY NOVEMBER 17


Today we finish our screening/discussion of Sofia Coppola's SOMEWHERE...and we walk into our psychedelic den of troublemaking, GMCS 333 with a gift in our hands!  That's right:

Analytical Imagination Challenge Numero Dos (2) is Due Today at the Beginning of Class!

Drop your finished essay into the receptacle that corresponds to your amazing TA or LIVE DANGEROUSLY and drop into Professor Nericcio's delirious bag of tricks!




TUESDAY NOVEMBER 22

THANKSGIVING

NO CLASS--enjoy the break with your friends and familia.

THURSDAY NOVEMBER 24

THANKSGIVING

NO CLASS--why are you even looking here!???? 

Go eat too much and have a great holiday!



TUESDAY NOVEMBER 29


NO CLASS TODAY IN GMCS 333!!!! 

Why!!!!????? Instead, you will have made plans to attend for free the performance of JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR tomorrow, WEDNESDAY, Nov. 30!

Show up to the Don Powell theatre at 6:45pm so that you can have time to find a seat for the pre-show chat with Professors Smigel & Nericcio, along with a couple of other experts from the School of Theatre, Television, and Film--you must go up to the box office to be admitted. The show begins right after this introduction.

We have cancelled class so that you can be there with us and this date has been on the calendar since September.  If, however, you cannot make this performance, you are welcome to attend the four other performances December 1, 2, 3, or 4, but you will have to pay the $15 fee and hold onto your ticket to prove you indeed attended. Details.


WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 30:

Special NIGHT class as we all go to the Don Powell for a groovy night of JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR.  Admission is free--details to follow!
THURSDAY DECEMBER 1

Jesus Christ Superstar discussion session!  The bulk of the class will be spent in a focused discussion/review of our experience in the Don Powell Theatre the night before.





TUESDAY DECEMBER 6


In this, our final regular class, we will here a commercial from my great colleague Andy Wiese, Chair, History, on his London Summer 2017 program; next we will review for the Final Exam, aka the Final In-Class Imagination Challenge; and last, but not least, we will experience our last required text of the semester together,  the "Phoenix" episode of BREAKING BAD, Directed by Colin Bucksey, with a screenplay by the series creator Vince Gilligan, with John Shiban--"Phoenix" was the 12th episode of season 2 for those keeping track of these things. By the early part of the 21st century we have moved out of an era where drugs were imagined as a form of escape or a vehicle for self-introspection. The world of BREAKING BAD is a blue crytal-meth world of pain, angst, addiction, selfishness, and greed--with a main character split between the once mild-mannered Walter White and the scary kingpin Heisenberg.



THURSDAY DECEMBER 8

Acid Test Instructions for today now LIVE!

December 8: Psychedelic Mirrors Acid Test; Joint meeting #4! Today is the day for our rock concert, scene, event, happening! CLASS WILL MEET IN MONTEZUMA HALL AT 11:00am sharp--try to get there a little early if you can, by 10:55am!!!!!!



TUESDAY DECEMBER 13

FINAL EXAM in GMCS 333 @ 11am sharp! Here are some sample finals so you don't come into the trippy experience utterly blind (nor surprised)--your final will follow the exact same format at the samples: the first part of the exam will consist of fill-in-the-blank questions; the second part will feature psychedelicTOOLGIZMOS™ and ask you to adapt/apply them; the third part will be an essay.







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